Back to school: Supporting affordable, accessible education

For some families, the excitement around school-year beginnings is tempered by worries about paying for education. That could be K-12, public or private college, or graduate coursework. These feelings are heightened for today’s students due to the sustained inflation affecting the cost of supplies, tuition, activities, living expenses, and travel. Add to that list student loan debt (a staggering $1.77 trillion as of 2023’s second quarter), with payments soon to resume. 

If your clients are passionate about education as a charitable priority, you can help them enhance their giving through a fund at the Community Foundation. It is a secure, convenient, and rewarding way to help mitigate education costs for students and families in the metro Atlanta community. The tools and resources we offer go far beyond scholarships! We can help your client provide both immediate and long-term support for education, in addition to the other causes they care about.

For example: 

• The Community Foundation can help structure a gift to fill gaps for teachers and school districts where budgets fall short. Through relationships with nonprofit organizations, our team can help ensure that charitable dollars are directly supporting teachers’ and schools’ desires to deliver the best possible education to students. 

• If a client feels strongly about supporting students’ opportunities to play sports, sing in the choir, or act in a school play or musical, our team can work with the client to structure a gift for stage equipment, instruments, or to support an event in honor or memory of a client’s inspirational parent, classmate, or instructor. 

• Clients who have enjoyed professional success in the technology sector may enjoy working with the Community Foundation to establish a fund that helps fulfill schools’ unmet needs for hardware and software.

• Some clients feel strongly about financial literacy because it is an underserved imperative for today’s students. Setting up a fund at the Community Foundation to underwrite educational materials or a speaker series covering important topics such as budgeting, taxes, credit, saving, and the magic of compounding, could have lifelong benefits for student attendees. 

• The Community Foundation can help a client establish a tailored charitable giving plan that meets the client’s desire to support education while also helping to ensure that the money does not go unused. Statistics gathered by the National Scholarship Providers Association reveal that approximately $100 million in scholarship money is left sitting on the sidelines each year. 

• Our team can help your client explore ways to support both students who attend traditional schools and students who attend non-traditional schools. Increasingly, many of today’s students are seeking career readiness through community colleges, trade schools, vocational programs, and out-of-the-box learning experiences that may be a better fit for the student than a college or university.  

Education is a popular subject of charitable interest. Whatever the reason for a client’s commitment to education as a charitable priority, the Community Foundation can help. Reach out to the Community Foundation whenever a client expresses a desire to make a difference in this area. We have lots of creative ways to make a difference.

Reach out to Josh Dukelow, gift planning officer, at 404.588.3208 or jdukelow@cfgreateratlanta.org to discuss how the Community Foundation can help you deliver on your client’s charitable ambitions. Let our experts be your partner for philanthropic impact!